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On  Going  to  Church 


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jFrom  tije  ^auop 

ON  GOING  TO  CHURCH 


FROM    THE    SAVOY 

an  (ZB0$ap 

€>n  (5oins  to  Cljurcb 

BY 

G.    BERNARD   SHAW 


I 


BOSTON 

JOHN  VV.  LUCE  &  CO. 

1905 


Copyright,  1905,  by  John  W.  Luce  &  Co. 


The  Plimpton  Press  Norwood  Mass. 


ON  GOING  7'0  CHURCH      ^  ^^ 


EMGUSH 


A  QUARTERLY 
PUBLISHED  IN  LONDON,   1896 

EDITED      BT 

ARTHUR   SYMONS 

Author  of 

"London  Nights," 

"A   Memoir  of  Aubrey  Beardsley,"   etc. 


[>] 


)A  S  a  modern  man,  concerned 
/jk  with  matters  of  fine  art  and 
-^  J^  living  in  London  by  the 
sweat  of  my  brain,  I  dwell  in  a 
world  which,  unable  to  live  by 
bread  alone,  lives  spiritually  on  al- 
cohol and  morphia.  Young  and 
excessively  sentimental  people  live 
on  love,  and  delight  in  poetry  or 
fine  writing  which  declares  that 
love  is  Alpha  and  Omega;  but  an 
attentive  examination  will  gener- 
ally establish  the  fact  that  this  kind 
of  love,  ethereal  as  it  seems,  is 
merely  a  symptom  of  the  druj^s  I 


On  Going  to  Church 

have  mentioned,  and  does  not  occur 
independently  except  in  those  per- 
sons whose  normal  state  is  similar 
to  that  induced  in  healthy  persons 
by  narcotic  stimulants.  If  from  the 
fine  art  of  to-day  we  set  aside  feel- 
ingless  or  prosaic  art,  which  is, 
properly,  not  fine  art  at  all,  we  may 
safely  refer  most  of  the  rest  to  feel- 
ing produced  by  the  teapot,  the 
bottle,  or  the  hypodermic  syringe. 
An  exhibition  of  the  cleverest  men 
and  women  in  London  at  five  p.m., 
with  their  afternoon  tea  cut  ofi^, 
would  shatter  many  illusions.  Tea 
and  coffee  and  cigarettes  produce 
conversation;  lager  beer  and  pipes 
produce   routine  journalism;   wine 

[2] 


On  Going  to  Church 

and  gallantry  produce  brilliant  jour- 
nalism, essays  and  novels;  brandy 
and  cigars  produce  violently  de- 
votional or  erotic  poetry;  morphia 
produces  tragic  exaltation  (useful  on 
the  stage);  and  sobriety  produces 
an  average  curate's  sermon.  Again, 
strychnine  and  arsenic  may  be  taken 
as  pick-me-ups;  doctors  quite  un- 
derstand that  *' tonics"  mean  drams 
of  ether;  chlorodyne  is  a  universal 
medicine;  chloral,  sulphonal  and 
the  like  call  up  Nature's  great  de- 
stroyer, artificial  sleep;  bromide  of 
potassium  will  reduce  the  over- 
sensitive man  of  genius  to  a  con- 
dition in  which  the  alighting  of  a 
wasp  on  his  naked  eyeball  will  not 

[J] 


On  Going  to  Church 


make  him  wink;  haschisch  tempts 
the  dreamer  by  the  Oriental  gla- 
mour of  its  reputation;  and  gin  is 
a  cheap  substitute  for  all  these  ano- 
dynes. Most  of  the  activity  of  the 
Press,  the  Pulpit,  the  Platform  and 
the  Theatre  is  only  a  symptom  of 
the  activity  of  the  drug  trade,  the 
tea  trade,  the  tobacco  trade  and  the 
liquor  trade.  The  world  is  not 
going  from  bad  to  worse,  it  is  true; 
but  the  increased  facilities  which 
constitute  the  advance  of  civilisa- 
tion include  facilities  for  drugging 
oneself.  These  facilities  wipe  whole 
races  of  black  men  off  the  face  of 
the  earth;  and  every  extension  and 
refinement  of  them  picks  a  stratum 

[4] 


On  Going  to  Church 


out  of  white  society  and  devotes  it 
to  destruction.  Such  traditions  of 
the  gross  old  habits  as  have  reached 
me  seem  to  be  based  on  the  idea 
of  first  doing  your  day's  work  and 
then  enjoying  yourself  by  getting 
drunk.  Nowadays  you  get  drunk 
to  enable  you  to  begin  work. 
Shakespere's  opportunities  of  med- 
dling with  his  nerves  were  much 
more  limited  than  Dante  Rossetti's ; 
but  it  is  not  clear  that  the  advan- 
tage of  the  change  lay  with  Ros- 
setti.  Besides,  though  Shakespere 
may,  as  tradition  asserts,  have  died 
of  drink  in  a  ditch,  he  at  all  events 
conceived  alcohol  as  an  enemy  put 
by  a  man  into  his  own  mouth  to 

[5] 


On  Going  to  Church 

steal  away  his  brains;  whereas  the 
modern  man  conceives  it  as  an  in- 
dispensable means  of  setting  his 
brains  going.  We  drink  and  drug, 
not  for  the  pleasure  of  it,  but  for 
Dutch  inspiration  and  by  the  advice 
of  our  doctors,  as  duellists  drink 
for  Dutch  courage  by  the  advice 
of  their  seconds.  Obviously  this 
systematic,  utilitarian  drugging 
and  stimulating,  though  necessarily 
"moderate"  (so  as  not  to  defeat  its 
own  object),  is  more  dangerous  than 
the  old  boozing  if  we  are  to  regard 
the  use  of  stimulants  as  an  evil. 

As  for  me,  I  do  not  clearly  see 
where  a  scientific  line  can  be  drawn 
between    food    and    stimulants.      I 
[6] 


On  Going  to  Church 

cannot  say,  like  Ninon  de  I'Enclos, 
that  a  bowl  of  soup  intoxicates  me; 
but  it  stimulates  me  as  much  as  I 
want  to  be  stimulated,  which  is, 
perhaps,  all  that  Ninon  meant. 
Still,  I  have  not  failed  to  observe 
that  all  the  drugs,  from  tea  to  mor- 
phia, and  all  the  drams,  from  lager 
beer  to  brandy,  dull  the  edge  of  self- 
criticism  and  make  a  man  content 
with  something  less  than  the  best 
work  of  which  he  is  soberly  capable. 
He  thinks  his  work  better,  when  he 
is  really  only  more  easily  satisfied 
with  himself.  Those  whose  daily 
task  is  only  a  routine,  for  the  suffi- 
cient discharge  of  which  a  man  need 
hardly  be  more  than  half  alive,  may 

[7] 


On  Going  to  Church 

seek  this  fool's  paradise  without 
detriment  to  their  work;  but  to 
those  professional  men  whose  art 
affords  practically  boundless  scope 
for  skill  of  execution  and  elevation 
of  thought,  to  take  drug  or  dram 
is  to  sacrifice  the  keenest,  most 
precious  part  of  life  to  a  dollop  of 
lazy  and  vulgar  comfort  for  which 
no  true  man  of  genius  should  have 
any  greater  stomach  than  the  lady 
of  the  manor  has  for  her  plough- 
man's lump  of  fat  bacon.  To  the 
creative  artist  stimulants  are  espe- 
cially dangerous,  since  they  produce 
that  terrible  dream-glamour  in 
which  the  ugly,  the  grotesque,  the 
wicked,  the  morbific  begin  to  fas- 
[8] 


On  Going  to  Church 

cinate  and  obsess  instead  of  disgust- 
ing. This  effect,  however  faint  it 
may  be,  is  always  produced  in  some 
degree  by  drugs.  The  mark  Icit 
on  a  novel  in  the  Leisure  Hour  by 
a  cup  of  tea  may  be  imperceptible 
to  a  bishop's  wife  who  has  just  had 
two  cups;  but  the  effect  is  there  as 
certainly  as  if  De  C^iincey's  eight 
thousand  drops  of  laudanum  had 
been  substituted. 

A  very  little  experience  of  the 
world  of  art  and  letters  will  con- 
vince any  open-minded  person  that 
abstinence,  pure  and  simple,  is  not 
a  practicable  remedy  for  this  state 
of  things.  There  is  a  considerable 
commercial  demand  for  maudlin  or 

[9] 


On  Going  to  Church 


nightmarish  art  and  literature  which 
no  sober  person  would  produce,  the 
manufacture  of  which  must  accord- 
ingly be  frankly  classed  industrially 
with  the  unhealthy  trades,  and  mor- 
ally with  the  manufacture  of  un- 
wholesome sweets  for  children  or 
the  distilling  of  gin.  What  the 
victims  of  this  industry  call  imagi- 
nation and  artistic  faculty  is  nothing 
but  attenuated  delirium  tremens, 
like  Pasteur's  attenuated  hydropho- 
bia. It  is  useless  to  encumber  an 
argument  with  these  predestined 
children  of  perdition.  The  only 
profitable  cases  are  those  to  con- 
sider of  people  engaged  in  the 
healthy  pursuit  of  those  arts  which 

[10] 


On  Going  to  Church 

afford  scope  for  the  greatest  mental 
and  physical  energy,  the  clearest 
and  acutest  reason  and  the  most 
elevated  perception.  Work  of  this 
kind  requires  an  intensity  of  energy 
of  which  no  ordinary  labourer  or 
routine  official  can  form  any  con- 
ception. If  the  dreams  of  Keeley- 
ism  could  be  so  far  realised  as  to 
transmute  human  brain  energy  into 
vulgar  explosive  force,  the  head  of 
Shakespere,  used  as  a  bombshell, 
might  conceivably  blow  England 
out  of  the  sea.  At  all  events,  the 
succession  of  efforts  by  which  a 
Shaksperean  play,  a  Beethoven  sym- 
phony, or  a  Wagner  music-drama 
is    produced,    though    it    may    not 

[■'] 


On  Going  to  Church 


overtax  Shakespere,  Beethoven  or 
Wagner,  must  certainly  tax  even 
them  to  the  utmost,  and  would  be 
as  prodigiously  impossible  to  the 
average  professional  man  as  the 
writing  of  an  ordinary  leading  arti- 
cle to  a  ploughman.  What  is  called 
professional  work  is,  in  point  of 
severity,  just  what  you  choose  to 
make  it,  either  commonplace,  easy 
and  requiring  only  f^ctensive  indus- 
try to  be  lucrative,  or  else  distin- 
guished, difficult  and  exacting  the 
fiercest  /^tensive  industry  in  return, 
after  a  probation  of  twenty  years  or 
so,  for  authority,  reputation  and  an 
income  only  sufficient  for  simple 
habits  and  plain  living.    The  whole 

[12] 


On  Going  to  Church 

professional  world  lies  between 
these  two  extremes.  At  the  one, 
you  have  the  man  to  whom  his 
profession  is  only  a  means  of  mak- 
ing himself  and  his  family  com- 
fortable and  prosperous:  at  the 
other,  you  have  the  man  who  sac- 
rifices everything  and  everybody, 
himself  included,  to  the  perfection 
of  his  w^ork  —  to  the  passion  for 
efficiency  which  is  the  true  master- 
passion  of  the  artist.  At  the  one, 
work  is  a  necessary  evil  and  money- 
making  a  pleasure:  at  the  other, 
work  is  the  objective  realisation  ot 
life  and  moneymaking  a  nuisance. 
At  the  one,  men  drink  and  drug  to 
make  themselves    comfortable:    at 

[13] 


On  Going  to  Church 

the  other,  to  stimulate  their  work- 
ing faculty.  Preach  mere  absti- 
nence at  the  one,  and  you  are 
preaching  nothing  but  diminution 
of  happiness.  Preach  it  at  the 
other,  and  you  are  proposing  a  re- 
duction of  efficiency.  If  you  are 
to  prevail,  you  must  propose  a  sub- 
stitute. And  the  only  one  I  have 
yet  been  able  to  hit  on  is  —  going 
to  church. 

It  will  not  be  disputed,  I  pre- 
sume, that  an  unstimulated  saint 
can  work  as  hard,  as  long,  as  finely 
and,  on  occasion,  as  fiercely,  as  a 
stimulated  sinner.  Recuperation, 
recreation,  inspiration  seem  to  come 
to  the  saint  far  more  surely  than  to 
[H] 


On  Going  to  Church 

the  man  who  grows  coarser  and 
fatter  with  every  additional  hun- 
dred a  year,  and  who  calls  the  saint 
an  ascetic.  A  comparison  of  the 
works  of  our  carnivorous  drunkard 
poets  with  those  of  Shelley,  or  of 
Dr.  Johnson's  dictionary  with  that 
of  the  vegetarian  Littre,  is  sufficient 
to  show  that  the  secret  of  attaining 
the  highest  eminence  either  in 
poetry  or  in  dictionary  compiling 
(and  all  fine  literature  lies  between 
the  two),  is  to  be  found  neither  in 
alcohol  nor  in  our  monstrous  habit 
of  bringing  millions  of  useless  and 
disagreeable  animals  into  existence 
for  the  express  purpose  of  barba- 
rously slaughtering  them,   roasting 

[15] 


On  Going  to  Church 

their  corpses  and  eating  them.  I 
have  myself  tried  the  experiment 
of  not  eating  meat  or  drinking  tea, 
coffee  or  spirits  for  more  than  a 
dozen  years  past,  without,  as  far  as  I 
can  discover,  placing  myself  at  more 
than  my  natural  disadvantages  rel- 
atively to  those  colleagues  of  mine 
who  patronise  the  slaughter-house 
and  the  distillery.  But  then  I  go 
to  church.  If  you  should  chance 
to  see,  in  a  country  churchyard,  a 
bicycle  leaning  against  a  tombstone, 
you  are  not  unlikely  to  find  me  in- 
side the  church  if  it  is  old  enough 
or  new  enough  to  be  fit  for  its  pur- 
pose.    There  I   find   rest   without 

languor  and  recreation  without  ex- 

[i6] 


On  Going  to  Church 


citement,  both  of  a  quality  un- 
known to  the  traveller  who  turns 
from  the  village  church  to  the  vil- 
lage inn  and  seeks  to  renew  him- 
self with  shandygaff.  Any  place 
where  men  dwell,  village  or  city, 
is  a  reflection  of  the  consciousness 
of  every  single  man.  In  my  con- 
sciousness there  is  a  market,  a  gar- 
den, a  dwelling,  a  workshop,  a 
lover's  walk  —  above  all,  a  cathe- 
dral. My  appeal  to  the  master- 
builder  is :  Mirror  this  cathedral 
for  me  in  enduring  stone ;  make  it 
with  hands ;  let  it  direct  its  sure 
and  clear  appeal  to  my  senses,  so 
that  when  my  spirit  is  vaguely 
groping  after  an  elusive  mood  my 

[17] 


On  Going  to  Church 

eye  shall  be  caught  by  the  skyward 
tower,  showing  me  where,  within 
the  cathedral,  I  may  find  my  way 
to  the  cathedral  within  me.  With 
a  right  knowledge  of  this  great 
function  of  the  cathedral  builder, 
and  craft  enough  to  set  an  arch  on 
a  couple  of  pillars,  make  doors  and 
windows  in  a  good  wall  and  put  a 
roof  over  them,  any  modern  man 
might,  it  seems  to  me,  build 
churches  as  they  built  them  in  the 
middle  ages,  if  only  the  pious 
founders  and  the  parson  would  let 
him.  For  want  of  that  knowledge, 
gentlemen  of  Mr.  Pecksniff's  pro- 
fession make  fashionable  pencil- 
drawings,  presenting  what  Mr. 
[.8] 


On  Going  to  Church 

Pecksniff's  creator  elsewhere  calls 
an  architectooralooral  appearance, 
with  which,  having  delighted  the 
darkened  eyes  of  the  committee 
and  the  clerics,  they  have  them 
translated  into  bricks  and  masonry 
and  take  a  shilling  in  the  pound  on 
the  bill,  with  the  result  that  the 
bishop  may  consecrate  the  finished 
building  until  he  is  black  in  the 
face  without  making  a  real  church 
of  it.  Can  it  be  doubted  by  the 
pious  that  babies  baptised  in  such 
places  go  to  limbo  if  they  die  be- 
fore qualifying  themselves  for  other 
regions ;  that  prayers  said  there  do 
not  count ;  nay,  that  such  purpose- 
less, respectable-looking  interiors 
['9] 


On  Going  to  Church 

are  irreconcilable  with  the  doctrine 
of  Omnipresence,  since  the  bishop's 
blessing  is  no  spell  of  black  magic 
to  imprison  Omnipotence  in  a  place 
that  must  needs  be  intolerable  to 
Omniscience  ?  At  all  events,  the 
godhead  in  me,  certified  by  the 
tenth  chapter  of  St.  John's  Gospel 
to  those  who  will  admit  no  other 
authority,  refuses  to  enter  these 
barren  places.  This  is  perhaps  for- 
tunate, since  they  are  generally  kept 
locked ;  and  even  when  they  are 
open,  they  are  jealously  guarded  in 
the  spirit  of  that  Westminster  Ab- 
bey verger  who,  not  along  ago,  had 
a  stranger  arrested  for  kneeling 
down,  and  explained,  when  remon- 

[20] 


On  Going  to  Ch/zrcb 

strated  with,  that  if  that  sort  of 
thing  were  tolerated,  they  would 
soon  have  people  praying  all  over 
the  place.  Happily  it  is  not  so 
everywhere.  You  may  now  ride 
or  tramp  into  a  village  with  a  fair 
chance  of  finding  the  church-door 
open  and  a  manuscript  placard  in 
the  porch,  wherehy  the  parson, 
speaking  no  less  as  a  man  and  a 
brother  than  as  the  porter  of  the 
House  Beautiful,  gives  you  to  un- 
derstand that  the  church  is  open 
always  for  those  who  have  any  use 
for  it.  Inside  such  churches  you 
will  often  find  not  only  carefully- 
cherished  work  from  the  ages  of 
faith,  which  you  expect  to  find  noble 


On  Going  to  Church 

and  lovely,  but  sometimes  a  quite 
modern  furnishing  of  the  interior 
and  draping  of  the  altar,  evidently 
done,  not  by  contract  with  a  firm 
celebrated  for  its  illustrated  cata- 
logues, but  by  someone  who  loved 
and  understood  the  church,  and 
who,  when  baffled  in  the  search  for 
beautiful  things,  had  at  least  suc- 
ceeded in  avoiding  indecently  com- 
mercial and  incongruous  ones.  And 
then  the  search  for  beauty  is  not 
always  baffled.  When  the  dean 
and  chapter  of  a  cathedral  want 
not  merely  an  ugly  but  a  positively 
beastly  pulpit  to  preach  from  — 
something  like  the  Albert  Memo- 
rial  canopy,   only    much   worse  — 

[22] 


On  Going  to  Church 

they  always  get  it,  improbable  and 
unnatural  as  the  enterprise  is.  Sim- 
ilarly, when  an  enlightened  country 
parson  wants  an  unpretending  tub 
to  thump,  with  a  few  pretty  panels 
in  it  and  a  pleasant  shape  generally, 
he  will,  with  a  little  perseverance, 
soon  enough  find  a  craftsman  who 
has  picked  up  the  thread  of  the 
tradition  of  his  craft  from  the  time 
when  that  craft  was  a  fine  art  —  as 
may  be  done  nowadays  more  easily 
than  was  possible  before  we  had 
cheap  trips  and  cheap  photographs* 

*At  the  bookstall  in  the  South  Kensing- 
ton Museum,  any  young  craftsman,  or  other 
person,  can  turn  over  hundreds  of  photo- 
graphs taken  by  Alinari,  of  Florence,  from 
the  finest  work  in   the  churches  and  palaces 


On  Going  to  Church 

—  and  who  is  only  too  glad  to  be 
allowed  to  try  his  hand  at  some- 
thing in  the  line  of  that  tradition. 
Some  months  ago,  bicycling  in  the 
west  country,  I  came  upon  a  little 
church,  built  long  before  the  sense 
of  beauty  and   devotion   had  been 

of  Italy.  He  will  not  be  importuned  to 
buy,  or  grudged  access  to  the  portfolios 
which  are,  fortunately,  in  charge  of  a 
lady  who  is  a  first-rate  public  servant. 
He  can,  however,  purchase  as  many  of 
the  photographs  as  he  wants  for  sixpence 
each.  This  invaluable  arrangement,  having 
been  made  at  the  public  expense,  is 
carefully  kept  from  the  public  knowledge, 
because,  if  it  were  properly  advertised, 
complaints  might  be  made  by  English 
shopkeepers  who  object  to  our  buying  Ali- 
nari's  cheap  photographs  instead  of  their  own 
dear  photographs  of  the  Great  Wheel  at 
Earl's    Court. 


On  Goi)i(T  to  Chnnh 

o 

supplanted  by  the  sense  of  respecta- 
bility and  talent,  in  which  some 
neat  panels  left  by  a  modern  carver 
had  been  painted  with  a  few  saints 
on  gold  backgrounds,  evidently  by 
some  woman  who  had  tried  to  learn 
what  she  could  from  the  early 
Florentine  masters  and  had  done 
the  work  in  the  true  votive  spirit, 
without  any  taint  of  the  amateur 
exhibiting  his  irritating  and  futile 
imitations  of  the  celebrated-artist 
business.  From  such  humble  but 
quite  acceptable  efforts,  up  to  the 
masterpiece  in  stained  glass  by  Wil- 
liam Morris  and  Burne-Jones  which 
occasionally  astonishes  you  in  places 
far  more  remote  and  unlikely  than 

[25] 


On  Going  to  Church 

Birmingham  or  Oxford,  convin- 
cing evidence  may  be  picked  up 
here  and  there  that  the  decay  of 
reHgious  art  from  the  sixteenth 
century  to  the  nineteenth  was  not 
caused  by  any  atrophy  of  the  artis- 
tic facuhy,  but  was  an  eclipse  of 
reUgion  by  science  and  commerce. 
It  is  an  odd  period  to  look  back 
on  from  the  churchgoer's  point 
of  view — those  eclipsed  centuries 
calling  their  predecessors  "  the 
dark  ages,"  and  trying  to  prove 
their  own  piety  by  raising,  at  huge 
expense,  gigantic  monuments  in 
enduring  stone  (not  very  enduring, 
though,  sometimes)  of  their  infi- 
delity. Go  to  Milan,  and  join  the 
[z6] 


On  Going  to  Church 


rush  of  tourists  to  its  petrified 
christening-cake  of  a  cathedral. 
The  projectors  of  that  costly  orna- 
ment spared  no  expense  to  prove 
that  their  devotion  was  ten  times 
greater  than  that  of  the  huilders 
of  San  Ambrogio.  But  every 
pound  they  spent  only  recorded  in 
marble  that  their  devotion  was  a 
hundred  times  less.  Go  on  to 
Florence  and  try  San  Lorenzo,  a 
really  noble  church  (which  the 
Milan  Cathedral  is  not),  Brunel- 
leschi's  masterpiece.  You  cannot 
but  admire  its  intellectual  com- 
mand of  form,  its  unaffected 
dignity,  its  power  and  accomplish- 
ment, its  masterly  combination  of 
[^7] 


On  Going  to  Church 

simplicity  and  homogeneity  of 
plan  with  elegance  and  variety  of 
detail  :  you  are  even  touched  by 
the  retention  of  that  part  of  the 
beauty  of  the  older  time  which 
was  perceptible  to  the  Renascent 
intellect  before  its  weaning  from 
heavenly  food  had  been  followed 
by  starvation.  You  understand 
the  deep  and  serious  respect  which 
Michael  Angelo  had  for  Brunnel- 
leschi  —  why  he  said  *'  I  can  do 
different  work,  but  not  better." 
But  a  few  minutes'  walk  to  Santa 
Maria  Novella  or  Santa  Croce,  or 
a  turn  in  the  steam-tram  to  San 
Miniato,  will  bring  you  to  churches 
built  a  century  or  two  earlier ;  and 

[28] 


On  Going  to  Church 

you  have  only  to  cross  their  thresh- 
olds to  feel,  almost  before  you 
have  smelt  the  incense,  the  differ- 
ence between  a  church  built  to 
the  pride  and  glory  of  God  (not  to 
mention  the  Medici)  and  one  built 
as  a  sanctuary  shielded  by  God's 
presence  from  pride  and  glory  and 
all  the  other  burdens  of  life.  In 
San  Lorenzo  up  goes  your  head  — 
every  isolating  advantage  you  have 
of  talent,  power  or  rank  asserts 
itself  with  thrilling  poignancy. 
In  the  older  churches  you  forget 
yourself,  and  are  the  equal  ot  the 
beggar  at  the  door,  standing  on 
ground  made  holy  by  that  labour 
in  which   we   have  discovered  the 

[29] 


On  Going  to  Church 

reality  of  prayer.  You  may  also 
hit  on  a  church  like  the  Santissima 
Annunziata,  carefully  and  expen- 
sively brought  up  to  date,  quite  in 
our  modern  church-restoring  man- 
ner, by  generations  of  princes 
chewing  the  cud  of  the  Renas- 
cence;  and  there  you  will  see  the 
worship  of  glory  and  the  self-suffi- 
ciency of  intellect  giving  way  to 
the  display  of  wealth  and  elegance 
as  a  guarantee  of  social  importance 
— in  another  word,  snobbery.  In 
later  edifices  you  see  how  intellect, 
finding  its  worshippers  growing 
colder,  had  to  abandon  its  dignity 
and  cut  capers  to  attract  attention, 
giving  the  grotesque,  the  eccentric, 
[3°] 


On  Going  to  Church 

the  baroque,  even  the  profane  and 
blasphemous,  until,  finally,  it  is 
thoroughly  snubbed  out  of  its  vul- 
gar attempts  at  self-assertion,  and 
mopes  conventionally  in  our  mod- 
ern churches  of  St.  Nicholas  With- 
out and  St.  Walker  Within,  locked 
up,  except  at  service-time,  from 
week's  end  to  week's  end  without 
ever  provoking  the  smallest  protest 
from  a  public  only  too  glad  to 
have  an  excuse  for  not  going  into 
them.  You  may  read  the  same 
history  of  the  human  soul  in  any 
art  you  like  to  select ;  but  he  who 
runs  may  read  it  in  the  streets  by 
looking  at  the  churches. 

Now,  consider  for  a  moment  the 
[31] 


On  Going  to  Church 

prodigious  increase  of  the  popu- 
lation of  Christendom  since  the 
church  of  San  Zeno  Maggiore  was 
built  at  Verona,  in  the  twelfth  and 
thirteenth  centuries.  Let  a  man 
go  and  renew  himself  for  half  an 
hour  occasionally  in  San  Zeno,  and 
he  need  eat  no  corpses,  nor  drink 
any  drugs  or  drams  to  sustain  him. 
Yet  not  even  all  Verona,  much  less 
all  Europe,  could  resort  to  San 
Zeno  in  the  thirteenth  century; 
whereas,  in  the  nineteenth,  a  thou- 
sand perfect  churches  would  be 
but  as  a  thousand  drops  of  rain  on 
Sahara.  Yet  in  London,  with  four 
millions  and  a  quarter  of  people  in 
it,    how    many    perfect    or    usable 

[32] 


On  Going  to  Church 

churches  are  there?  And  of  the 
few  we  have,  how  many  are  ap- 
parent to  the  wayfarer?  Who,  for 
instance,  would  guess  from  the 
repulsive  exterior  of  Westminster 
Abbey  that  there  are  beautiful 
chapels  and  a  noble  nave  within, 
or  cloisters  without,  on  the  hidden 
side  ? 

I  remember,  a  dozen  years  ago. 
Parson  Shuttleworth,  of  St.  Nicho- 
las Cole  Abuey  in  the  city,  tried 
to  persuade  the  city  man  to  spend 
his  mid-day  hour  of  rest  in  church ; 
guaranteeing  him  immunity  from 
sermons,  prayers  and  collections, 
and  even  making  the  organ  dis- 
course  Bach  and   Wagner,  instead 

[33] 


On  Going  to  Church 

of  Goss  and  Jackson.  This  singu- 
lar appeal  to  a  people  walking  in 
darkness  was  quite  successful :  the 
mid-day  hour  is  kept  to  this  day; 
but  Parson  Shuttleworth  has  to 
speak  for  five  minutes  —  by  general 
and  insistent  request  —  as  House- 
keeper, though  he  has  placed  a 
shelf  of  books  in  the  church  for 
those  who  would  rather  read  than 
listen  to  him  or  the  organ.  This 
was  a  good  thought ;  for  all  in- 
spired books  should  be  read  either 
in  church  or  on  the  eternal  hills. 
St.  Nicholas  Cole  Abbey  makes 
you  feel,  the  moment  you  enter  it, 
that  you  are  in  a  rather  dingy  ro- 
coco banqueting-room,  built  for  a 

[34] 


On  Going  to  Church 

city  company.  Corpulence  and 
comfort  are  written  on  every  vStone 
of  it.  Considering  that  money  is 
dirt  cheap  now  in  the  city,  it  is 
strange  that  Mr.  Shuttleworth  can- 
not get  twenty  thousand  pounds  to 
build  a  real  church.  He  would, 
soon  enough,  if  the  city  knew 
what  a  church  was.  The  twenty 
thousand  pounds  need  not  be 
wasted,  either,  on  an  *'  architect." 
I  was  lately  walking  in  a  polite 
suburb  of  Newcastle,  when  I  saw 
a  church  —  a  new  church  —  with, 
of  all  things,  a  detached  cam- 
panile ;  at  sight  of  w  hich  I  could 
not  help  exclaiming  profanely : 
"  How  the  deuce  did  you  find  your 

[35] 


On  Going  to  Church 

way  to  Newcastle  ?  *'  So  I  went 
in  and,  after  examining  the  place 
with  much  astonishment,  addressed 
myself  to  the  sexton,  who  hap- 
pened to  be  about.  I  asked  him 
who  built  the  church,  and  he  gave 
me  the  name  of  Mr.  Mitchell, 
who  turned  out,  however,  to  be 
the  pious  founder  —  a  shipbuilder 
prince,  with  some  just  notion  of 
his  princely  function.  But  this 
was  not  what  I  wanted  to  know ; 
so  I  asked  who  was  the  —  the 
word  stuck  in  my  throat  a  little  — 
the  architect.  He,  it  appeared, 
was  one  Spence.  "Was  that  mar- 
ble carving  in  the  altar  and  that 
mosaic  decoration  round  the  chan- 

[36] 


On  Going  to  Church 

eel  part  of  his  design?"  said  I. 
"Yes,"  said  the  sexton,  with  a 
certain  surliness  as  if  he  suspected 
me  of  disapproving.  *'The  iron- 
work is  good,"  I  remarked,  to 
appease  him;  *'who  did  that?" 
"Mr.  Spence  did."  "Who  carved 
that  wooden  figure  of  St.  George?" 
(the  patron  saint  of  the  edifice). 
"  Mr.  Spence  did."  "  Who  painted 
those  four  panels  in  the  dado  with 
figures  in  oil?"  "Mr.  Spence  did: 
he  meant  them  to  be  at  intervals 
round  the  church,  but  we  put  them 
all  together  by  mistake."  "Then, 
perhaps,  he  designed  the  stained 
windows,  too?"  "Yes,  most  of 
'em."      I  got  so  irritated  at  this  — 

[37] 


On  Going  to  Church 

feeling  that  Spence  was  going  too 
far  —  that  I  remarked  sarcastically 
that  no  doubt  Mr.  Spence  designed 
Mr.  Mitchell's  ships  as  well,  which 
turned  out  to  be  the  case  as  far  as 
the  cabins  were  concerned.  Clearly, 
this  Mr.  Spence  is  an  artist-crafts- 
man with  a  vengeance.  Many 
people,  I  learnt,  came  to  see  the 
church,  especially  in  the  first  eigh- 
teen months ;  but  some  of  the 
congregation  thought  it  too  orna- 
mental. (At  St.  Nicholas  Cole 
Abbey,  by  the  way,  some  of  the 
parishioners  objected  at  first  to 
Mr.  Shuttleworth  as  being  too 
religious.)  Now,  as  a  matter  of 
fact,  this  Newcastle  Church  of  St. 

[38] 


On  Going  to  Church 

George's  is  not  ornamental  enough. 
Under  modern  commercial  condi- 
tions, it  is  impossible  to  get  from 
the  labour  in  the  building-trade 
that  artistic  quality  in  the  actual 
masonry  which  makes  a  good 
mediaeval  building  independent  of 
applied  ornament.  Wherever  Mr. 
Spence's  artist's  hand  has  passed 
over  the  interior  surface,  the 
church  is  beautiful.  Why  should 
his  hand  not  pass  over  every  inch 
of  it  ?  It  is  true,  the  complete 
finishing  of  a  large  church  of  the 
right  kind  has  hardly  ever  been 
carried  through  by  one  man. 
Sometimes  the  man  has  died : 
more  often   the  money  has  failed. 

[39] 


On  Going  to  Church 

But  in  this  instance  the  man  is 
not  dead  ;  and  surely  money  can- 
not fail  in  the  most  fashionable 
suburb  of  Newcastle.  The  chan- 
cel with  its  wonderful  mosaics, 
the  baptistry  with  its  ornamented 
stones,  the  four  painted  panels  of 
the  dado,  are  only  samples  of 
what  the  whole  interior  should 
and  might  be.  All  that  cold  con- 
tract masonry  must  be  redeemed, 
stone  by  stone,  by  the  travail  of 
the  artist  church-maker.  Nobody, 
not  even  an  average  respectable 
Sabbath-keeper,  will  dare  to  say 
then  that  it  is  over-decorated,  how- 
ever out  of  place  in  it  he  may 
feel   his   ugly  Sunday   clothes  and 

[40] 


On  Going  to  Church 

his  wife's  best  bonnet.  Howbeit, 
this  church  of  St.  George's  in  New- 
castle proves  my  point,  namely,  that 
churches  fit  for  their  proper  use 
can  still  be  built  by  men  who 
follow  the  craft  of  Orcagna  instead 
of  the  profession  of  Mr.  Pecksniff, 
and  built  cheaply,  too  ;  for  I  took 
the  pains  to  ascertain  what  this 
large  church  cost,  and  found  that 
^30,000  was  well  over  the  mark. 
For  aught  I  know,  there  may  be 
dozens  of  such  churches  rising  in 
the  country ;  for  Mr.  Spence's 
talent,  though  evidently  a  rare  and 
delicate  one,  cannot  be  unique, 
and  what  he  has  done  in  his  own 
style  other  men  can  do  in  theirs, 

[41] 


On  Going  to  Church 


if  they  want  to,  and  are  given  the 
means  by  those  who  can  make 
money,  and  are  capable  of  the  same 
want. 

There  is  still  one  serious  obstacle 
to  the  use  of  churches  on  the  very 
day  when  most  people  are  best 
able  and  most  disposed  to  visit 
them.  I  mean,  of  course,  the 
services.  When  I  was  a  little  boy, 
I  was  compelled  to  go  to  church 
on  Sunday ;  and  though  I  escaped 
from  that  intolerable  bondage  be- 
fore I  was  ten,  it  prejudiced  me  so 
violently  against  churchgoing  that 
twenty  years  elapsed  before,  in 
foreign  lands  and  in  pursuit  of 
works  of  art,  I  became  once  more 
[42] 


On  Going  to  Church 

a  churchgoer.  To  this  day,  my 
flesh  creeps  when  I  recall  that 
genteel  suburban  Irish  Protestant 
church,  built  by  Roman  Catholic 
workmen  who  would  have  con- 
sidered themselves  damned  had 
they  crossed  its  threshold  after- 
wards. Every  separate  stone,  every 
pane  of  glass,  every  fillet  of  orna- 
mental ironwork  —  half-dog-collar, 
half-coronet  —  in  that  building 
must  have  sowed  a  separate  evil 
passion  in  my  young  heart.  Yes ; 
all  the  vulgarity,  savagery,  and  bad 
blood  which  has  marred  my  lit- 
erary work,  was  certainly  laid  upon 
me  in  that  house  of  Satan  !  The 
mere  nullity  of  the  building  could 

[43] 


On  Going  to  Church 

make  no  positive  impression  on 
me ;  but  what  could,  and  did, 
were  the  unnaturally  motionless 
figures  of  the  congregation  in  their 
Sunday  clothes  and  bonnets,  and 
their  set  faces,  pale  with  the  malig- 
nant rigidity  produced  by  the  sup- 
pression of  all  expression.  And 
yet  these  people  were  always  mov- 
ing and  watching  one  another  by 
stealth,  as  convicts  communicate 
with  one  another.  So  was  I.  I 
had  been  told  to  keep  my  restless 
little  limbs  still  all  through  those 
interminable  hours;  not  to  talk; 
and,  above  all,  to  be  happy  and 
holy  there  and  glad  that  I  was  not 
a  wicked  little  boy  playing  in  the 
[4+] 


On  Going  to  Church 

fields  instead  of  worshipping  God. 
I  hypocritically  acquiesced ;  but 
the  state  of  my  conscience  may 
be  imagined,  especially  as  I  im- 
plicitly believed  that  all  the  rest 
of  the  congregation  were  perfectly 
sincere  and  good.  I  remember  at 
that  time  dreaming  one  night  that 
I  was  dead  and  had  gone  to  heaven. 
The  picture  of  heaven  which  the 
efforts  of  the  then  Established 
Church  of  Ireland  had  conveyed 
to  my  childish  imagination,  was  a 
waiting-room  with  walls  of  pale 
sky-coloured  tabbinet,  and  a  pew- 
like bench  running  all  round,  ex- 
cept at  one  corner,  where  there 
was  a  door.    I  was,  somehow,  aware 

[45] 


On  Going  to  Church 

that  God  was  in  the  next  room, 
accessible  through  that  door.  I  was 
seated  on  the  bench  with  my  ankles 
tightly  interlaced  to  prevent  my  legs 
dangling,  behaving  myself  with  all 
my  might  before  the  grown-up 
people,  who  all  belonged  to  the 
Sunday  congregation,  and  were 
either  sitting  on  the  bench  as  if  at 
church  or  else  moving  solemnly  in 
and  out  as  if  there  were  a  dead 
person  in  the  house.  A  grimly- 
handsome  lady  who  usually  sat  in  a 
corner  seat  near  me  in  church,  and 
whom  I  believed  to  be  thoroughly 
conversant  with  the  arrangements 
of  the  Almighty,  was  to  introduce 
me  presently  into  the  next  room — 

[46] 


On  Going  to  Church 

a  moment  which  I  was  supposed 
to  await  with  joy  and  enthusiasm. 
Really,  of  course,  my  heart  sank 
like  lead  within  me  at  the  thought; 
for  I  felt  that  my  feeble  affectation 
of  piety  could  not  impose  on  Om- 
niscience, and  that  one  glance  of 
that  all-searching  eye  would  dis- 
cover that  I  had  been  allowed  to 
come  to  heaven  by  mistake.  Un- 
fortunately, for  the  interest  of  this 
narrative,  I  awoke,  or  wandered  off 
into  another  dream,  before  the 
critical  moment  arrived.  But  it 
goes  far  enough  to  show  that  I  was 
by  no  means  an  insusceptible  sub- 
ject: indeed,  I  am  sure,  from  other 
early  experiences  of  mine,  that  if  I 
[47] 


On  Goim  to  Church 

C3 

had   been   turned    loose   in   a   real 
church,  and  allowed  to  wander  and 
stare   about,    or   hear   noble   music 
there  instead  of  that  most  accursed 
Te  Deum  of  Jackson's  and  a  sense- 
less droning  of  the  Old  Hundredth, 
I  should  never  have  seized  the  op- 
portunity of  a  great  evangelical  re- 
vival, which  occurred  when  I  was 
still  in  my  teens,  to  begin  my  lit- 
erary  career   with   a   letter   to   the 
Press    (which    was    duly    printed), 
announcing  with  inflexible  materi- 
alistic   logic,   and  to   the   extreme 
horror  of  my  respectable  connec- 
tions, that  I  was  an  atheist.    When, 
later  on,  I  was  led  to  the  study  of 
the  economic  basis  of  the  respecta- 
[48] 


On  Goin^  to  Church 

o 

bility  of  that  and  similar  congrega- 
tions, I  was  inexpressibly  relieved 
to  find  that  it  represented  a  mere 
passing  phase  of  industrial  confu- 
sion, and  could  never  have  sub- 
stantiated its  claims  to  my  respect 
if,  as  a  child,  I  had  been  able  to 
bring  it  to  book.  To  this  very  day, 
whenever  there  is  the  slightest 
danger  of  my  being  mistaken  for  a 
votary  of  the  blue  tabbinet  waiting- 
room  or  a  supporter  of  that  mo- 
rality in  which  wrong  and  right,  base 
and  noble,  evil  and  good,  really  mean 
nothing  more  than  the  kitchen  and 
the  drawing-room,  I  hasten  to  claim 
honourable  exemption,  as  atheist  and 
socialist,  from  any  such  complicity. 
[49] 


On  Going  to  Church 

When  I  at  last  took  to  church- 
going  again,  a  kindred  difficulty 
beset  me,  especially  in  Roman 
Catholic  countries.  In  Italy,  for 
instance,  churches  are  used  in  such 
a  way  that  priceless  pictures  become 
smeared  with  filthy  tallow-soot,  and 
have  sometimes  to  be  rescued  by 
the  temporal  power  and  placed  in 
national  galleries.  But  worse  than 
this  are  the  innumerable  daily  ser- 
vices which  disturb  the  truly  relig- 
ious visitor.  If  these  were  decently 
and  intelligently  conducted  by  gen- 
uine mystics  to  whom  the  Mass  was 
no  mere  rite  or  miracle,  but  a  real 
communion,  the  celebrants  might 
reasonably  claim  a  place  in  the 
[50] 


On  Going  to  Church 

church  as  their  share  of  the  com- 
mon human  right  to  its  use.  But 
the  average  Italian  priest,  person- 
ally uncleanly,  and  with  chronic 
catarrh  of  the  nose  and  throat,  pro- 
duced and  maintained  by  sleeping 
and  living  in  frowsy,  ill-ventilated 
rooms,  punctuating  his  gabbled 
Latin  only  by  expectorative  hawk- 
ing, and  making  the  decent  guest 
sicken  and  shiver  every  time  the 
horrible  splash  of  spitten  mucus 
echoes  along  the  vaulting  from  the 
marble  steps  of  the  altar:  this  un- 
seemly wretch  should  be  seized  and 
put  out,  bell,  book,  candle  and  all, 
until  he  learns  to  behave  himself. 
The  English  tourist  is  often  lectured 


On  Going  to  Church 

for  his  inconsiderate  behaviour  in 
ItaHan  churches,  for  walking  about 
during  service,  talking  loudly, 
thrusting  himself  rudely  between  a 
worshipper  and  an  altar  to  examine 
a  painting,  even  for  stealing  chips 
of  stone  and  scrawling  his  name  on 
statues.  But  as  far  as  the  mere 
disturbance  of  the  services  is  con- 
cerned, and  the  often  very  evident 
disposition  of  the  tourist — especially 
the  experienced  tourist— to  regard 
the  priest  and  his  congregation  as 
troublesome  intruders,  a  week  spent 
in  Italy  will  convince  any  unpreju- 
diced person  that  this  is  a  perfectly 
reasonable  attitude.  I  have  seen 
inconsiderate  British  behaviour 

[5^] 


On  Going  to  Church 

often  enough  both  in  church  and 
out  of  it.  The  slow-witted  EngHsh- 
man  who  refuses  to  get  out  of  the 
way  of  the  Host,  and  looks  at  the 
bellringer  going  before  it  with 
"Where  the  devil  are  you  shoving 
to?"  written  in  every  pucker  of  his 
free-born  British  brow,  is  a  familiar 
figure  to  me;  but  I  have  never  seen 
any  stranger  behave  so  insufferably 
as  the  officials  of  the  church  habitu- 
ally do.  It  is  the  sacristan  who 
teaches  you,  when  once  you  are 
committed  to  tipping  him,  not  to 
waste  your  good  manners  on  the 
kneeling  worshippers  who  are 
snatching  a  moment  from  their 
daily  round  of  drudgery  and  starva- 

[53] 


On  Going  to  Church 

tion  to  be  comforted  by  the  Blessed 
Virgin  or  one  of  the  saints  :  it  is 
the  officiating  priest  who  makes 
you  understand  that  the  congrega- 
tion are  past  shocking  by  any  in- 
decency that  you  would  dream  of 
committing,  and  that  the  black 
looks  of  the  congregation  are  di- 
rected at  the  foreigner  and  the 
heretic  only,  and  imply  a  denial  of 
your  right  as  a  human  being  to  your 
share  of  the  use  of  the  church. 
That  right  should  be  unflinchingly 
asserted  on  all  proper  occasions.  I 
know  no  contrary  right  by  which 
the  great  Catholic  churches  made 
for  the  world  by  the  great  church- 
builders  should  be  monopolised  by 

[54] 


On  Going  to  Church 

any  sect  as  against  any  man  who 
desires  to  use  them.  My  own  taith 
is  clear:  I  am  a  resolute  Protestant; 
I  believe  in  the  Holy  Catholic 
Church;  in  the  Holy  Trinity  of 
Father,  Son  (or  Mother,  Daughter) 
and  Spirit;  in  the  Communion  of 
Saints,  the  Life  to  Come,  the  Im- 
maculate Conception,  and  the  every- 
day reality  of  Oodhead  and  the 
Kingdom  of  Heaven.  Also,  I  be- 
lieve that  salvation  depends  on  re- 
demption from  belief  in  miracles; 
and  I  regard  St.  Athanasius  as 
an  irreligious  fool  —  that  is,  in  the 
only  serious  sense  of  the  word, 
a  damned  fool.  I  pity  the  poor 
neurotic  who  can  say,  **  Man  that 

[55] 


On  Going  to  Church 

is  born  of  a  woman  hath  but  a  short 
time  to  live,  and  is  full  of  misery," 
as  I  pity  a  maudlin  drunkard;  and 
I  know  that  the  real  religion  of  to- 
day was  made  possible  only  by  the 
materialist-physicists  and  atheist- 
critics,  who  performed  for  us  the 
indispensable  preliminary  operation 
of  purging  us  thoroughly  of  the 
ignorant  and  vicious  superstitions 
which  were  thrust  down  our  throats 
as  religion  in  our  helpless  child- 
hood. How  those  who  assume 
that  our  churches  are  the  private 
property  of  their  sect  would  think 
of  this  profession  of  faith  of  mine 
I  need  not  describe.  But  am  I, 
therefore,  to  be  denied  access  to  the 

[56] 


On  Going  to  Church 

place  of  spiritual  recreation  which 
is  my  inheritance  as  much  as  theirs  ? 
If,  for  example,  I  desire  to  follow 
a  good  old  custom  by  pledging  my 
love  to  my  wife  in  the  church  of 
our  parish,  why  should  I  be  denied 
due  record  in  the  registers  unless 
she  submits  to  have  a  moment  of 
deep  feeling  made  ridiculous  by  the 
reading  aloud  of  the  naive  imperti- 
nences of  St.  Peter,  who,  on  the 
subject  of  Woman,  was  neither 
Catholic  nor  Christian,  but  a  boorish 
Syrian  fisherman.  If  I  want  to 
name  a  child  in  the  church,  the 
prescribed  service  may  be  more 
touched  with  the  religious  spirit- 
once  or  twice  beautifully  touched — 

[57] 


On  Going  to  Church 

but,  on  the  whole,  it  is  time  to  dis- 
miss our  prayer-book  as  quite  rotten 
with  the  pessimism  of  the  age 
which  produced  it.  In  spite  of  the 
stolen  jewels  with  which  it  is  stud- 
ded, an  age  of  strength  and  faith 
and  noble  activity  can  have  nothing 
to  do  with  it:  Caliban  might  have 
constructed  such  a  ritual  out  of  his 
own  terror  of  the  supernatural,  and 
such  fragments  of  the  words  of  the 
saints  as  he  could  dimly  feel  some 
sort  of  glory  in. 

My  demand  will  now  be  under- 
stood without  any  ceremonious  for- 
mulation of  it.  No  nation,  working 
at  the  strain  we  face,  can  live 
cleanly    without    public-houses    in 

[58] 


On  Going  to  Church 


which  to  seek  refreshment  and  rec- 
reation. To  supply  that  vital  want 
we  have  the  drinking-shop  with  its 
narcotic,  stimulant  poisons,  the  con- 
venticle with  its  brimstone-flavoured 
hot  gospel,  and  the  church.  In  the 
church  alone  can  our  need  be  truly 
met,  nor  even  there  save  when  we 
leave  outside  the  door  the  materi- 
alisations that  help  us  to  believe  the 
incredible,  and  the  intellectualisa- 
tions  that  help  us  to  think  the  un- 
thinkable, completing  the  refuse- 
heap  of  "isms"  and  creeds  with  our 
vain  lust  for  truth  and  happiness, 
and  going  in  without  thought  or 
belief  or  prayer  or  any  other  vanity, 
so  that  the  soul,  freed  from  all  that 

[59] 


On  Going  to  Church 

crushing  lumber,  may  open  all  its 
avenues  of  life  to  the  holy  air  of  the 
true  Catholic  Church. 


[60] 


EPIGRAMS 

AND 

APHORISMS 

BY 
OSCAR  WILDE 


A  careful  and  complete  compilation  of 
the  gems  of  thought  and  brilliant  wit- 
ticisms of  this  author,  together  with 
some  of  his  opinions  on  art,  selected 
from  "Lady  Windemere's  Fan,"  "A 
Woman  of  No  Importance,"  "An  Ideal 
Husband,"  "The  Importance  of  being 
Earnest,"  The  Picture  of  Dorian 
Gray,"  "The  Decay  of  the  Art  of 
Lying,"  etc.,  etc.  1  he  sources  from 
which  these  selections  are  made  are  out 
of  print,  and  it  has  only  been  by  the 
most  thorough  research  that  they  have 
been  collected  for  this  volume.  Attract- 
ively bound,  $1.50. 

Fifty  numbered  copies  on  Japan  Vel- 
lum at  $5.00  each. 


/ 


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